Soul Bound (20 page)

“One theory says that knowledge is stored in the cells, and that the brain simply retrieves it. Another more religious theory claims that the brain acts as a receiver, and that memories actually reside in the soul.” Lia took a deep breath, held it. “I’m starting to think they’re both right.”

“So all the factual knowledge I acquired throughout my life is recorded in my body, whereas the emotional knowledge—”

“Was stored in your soul and now dwells in me.”

Jace released a long string of air, as if he, too, had been holding his breath. “Crazy stuff.”

“No crazier than everything else that has been going on lately.”

He choked on a laugh. “You got me there.”

“So what do you say we comb this place?” she said.

His wide grin hit her like an electrical charge to the heart. “The more I get to know you, the more I like you.”

Diane had messed up. Again. Now she had to face Athanatos and tell him that she’d failed to carry out his orders. There was only so long she could hide. If Athanatos wanted to find her, he would. The man was practically a god.

The best she could do was own up to her failure.

“Diahann.” He spoke her name as she entered his room. These weren’t his official quarters. His true residence was located deep within the earth, a regal chamber fit for a king, buried in the heart of the catacombs. Still, every so often he liked to venture to the surface, to live like the humans did.

Outside, the sun blazed with blinding intensity. But here, in this rundown hotel, shadows ruled. Thick drapes covered all the windows and cobwebs of gloom clung stubbornly to the walls. Athanatos’s dark head nearly touched the ceiling, so tall did he stand, and a long, black cloak fell from his shoulders to scrape the floor. Some believed that cloak was as ancient as Athanatos himself.

“Your Excellency.”

“I’ve been anticipating your arrival. Tell me, has the threat been eliminated?”

A slight tremor coursed through her, and she thanked the fates that she was incapable of succumbing to terror. “No, my lord. I have failed. Jace Cutler lives.”

She fell to her knees, waited for him to dole out justice as he saw fit.

Athanatos displayed the cool temperament for which he was renowned. “Tell me what happened.”

She inclined her chin, stared at the imposing figure before her. “He’s different from the others. Powerful. I don’t understand it. I tried to drown him twice, but he broke free.” She averted her gaze and lowered her head respectfully. “And that’s not all,” she whispered. “He has the ability to plant a suggestion. Not only in humans, but in his own kind.”

Silence permeated the stuffy room. Dull lights hummed annoyingly overhead. “Interesting.”

Athanatos turned his back to her so that she could no longer see his face. Not that it made a difference. Like the rest of them, his expression was blank and indecipherable. “Shame I have to kill him. His talents could prove useful.”

“We can’t risk it. He can’t be trusted. The prophecy clearly states—”

“Don’t tell me what the prophecy states,” he commanded in a quelling tone. “I know better than anyone what the angels have predicted.”

“I apologize, my lord.”

Athanatos approached her, walked in large, assessing circles around her. “Have you recently fed, Diahann?” The question rang like a reproach.

“I had no choice,” she mumbled. “My encounter with Cutler drained me. I needed to replenish my energy.”

“Remember how we deal with Rogues,” he warned.

Rogues were Kleptopsychs or Hybrids who followed no particular rule. They were out for themselves, feeding at will, leaving long trails of destruction in their wake. They went where they wanted, fed when they wanted, mated with whomever they wanted. Both the Kleptopsychs and the Watchers loathed the Rogues for different reasons, so they hunted them down and destroyed them.

“A certain order must be respected,” Athanatos continued. “It is the only way to ensure our survival. If the Rogues were given free rein, our presence would’ve been revealed to the humans ages ago.”

“Yes, Your Excellency. Forgive me. I won’t stray from the path again.”

He twined his fingers through her hair and dragged her to her feet. Black energy sizzled between them, and her body quivered in response. “Patience,” he growled. “In due time, all your needs will be satisfied.”

She leaned into him, her nipples puckering, dampness pooling between her legs. “When?”

His lips twitched. “Soon.”

Athanatos was special in that he was blessed with the ability to control the earth itself. One thought and the ground quaked, causing human-made structures to collapse and numerous lives to be claimed. Every so often he planned a disaster of inordinate proportions, which allowed his brethren to feed to its heart’s content. Hundreds—sometimes thousands—of humans perished at once. The souls the Kleptopsychs ingested during one of these sessions usually sustained them for months, sometimes years.

He released her abruptly, and she went stumbling backward. Her body screamed in protest. For fifty years, she’d led the life of a nun. As much as she wanted to change that, she couldn’t have sex with anyone unless Athanatos gave her permission. Mating among their kind was a tightly controlled process, with the sole purpose of producing the most powerful offspring. As for mating with humans, it was strictly forbidden as it could result in the birth of another Hybrid, provided the human survived long enough for a child to be conceived.

The Watchers were in an even more physically frustrating predicament. Their leader, Cal, demanded they all take a vow of celibacy when they joined his army, so as not to run the risk of breeding more of their kind. Becoming a Watcher was like becoming a monk, which only confirmed how dedicated the traitors were.

“What do I do about Cutler?” she asked, remembering the topic at hand.

“Nothing. You can’t best him on your own. We’ll need to track him and bring him here to the tanks.”

“But the mind control—”

“There are only so many suggestions he can plant at once. I’ll send a team, put Kyros in charge.”

Diane nodded. “There’s more,” she insisted. “I didn’t tell you about the girl.”

“What girl?”

“The doctor who witnessed his rebirth, Lia Benson. I think she’s involved. The Watchers nabbed her. Cutler was frantic. Most perplexing of all is that he had bruises on his wrists. I didn’t think Hybrids could bruise.”

Athanatos ate up the distance between them. Calculating interest sparked in his eyes. “They can’t.”

“Then how—”

His fingers curled in a seductive clasp around her neck, and the query died upon her lips. He pulled her to him, bent down and stared at her mouth as if he were about to devour it. “That’s a very good question. How, indeed?”

His breath scraped her lips, so close did his mouth hover above hers. Fire ravaged her flesh. Every inch of her ached with yearning. It shot through her bloodstream, coiled painfully in her belly as she waited for a kiss that never came.

“Did Jace Cutler bear the Watchers’ mark?”

“No,” she purred. “I think that’s why the Watchers took her, to get to him. Cutler seems very
passionate
about her. Too passionate for one deprived of a soul.”

Athanatos grew silent as he reflected. “If the Watchers went through the trouble of kidnapping this human, she must be significant. We need to figure out how.”

“They won’t keep her locked up forever. Cal wouldn’t risk corrupting her. When they release her, I can grab her—”

His eyes grew flat and empty, void of the fire that had flickered within them seconds ago. With a bitter grin, he shoved her away. “There’s no need, Diahann. I’ll take it from here.”

Lia sat on the attic floor, her head bent over a box as she carefully examined a handful of newspaper clippings and legal documents. Her sun-kissed hair cascaded over her shoulders, and an intelligent, serious-as-a-heartache expression darkened her face. Jace never would’ve figured he had a taste for smart women, but apparently he did, because the sudden impulse to yank those pages from her hands and spread her body beneath his gripped him. It made no difference that about an inch of dust carpeted the floor or that a single kiss from him could kill her. All he could think about was tasting her. Ever since her bold come-on last night, he’d thought of little else.

“Did you find anything?” she asked him.

He ventured closer, happy she hadn’t read his thoughts. He’d come to realize that, unlike him, Lia didn’t seem able to see inside his head unless she made physical contact. Although he didn’t need to touch her to connect with her consciousness, he didn’t capture everything that went through her mind, either, just bits and pieces of it.

“Yeah, a change of clothes. Just my size, too.” He modeled the low-slung, stone-washed jeans and black T-shirt he’d found in what he assumed was his old room. He’d believed everything he owned had been washed away by Diane’s second murder attempt. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, because he really didn’t see himself going on a shopping spree right now.

Lia’s gaze swept over him in a way that made him forget why he’d sworn not to claim her the way a man damn well should claim a woman. Her eyes were wide and appreciative, and a hot flush crept up her neck to color her cheeks. “Anything look familiar?”

“Nope.” Crouching beside her, he studied the documents she held in an effort to distract himself from her cleavage. No such luck. The top button of her blouse had come undone, exposing a lacy white bra. His mouth went painfully dry. He swallowed, tried to concentrate. “What are those?”

“Deeds of sale for all sorts of commercial and residential properties,” she said. “Your dad owns half the real estate around here—stores, hotels, apartment complexes. Listen to this.” She pulled out a newspaper clipping featuring a snapshot of the same man whose face graced several of the picture frames downstairs. “Real estate mogul David Cutler suffered a severe mental breakdown last week, following the unfortunate suicide of a teenage boy at the Cutler family home on Siletz Bay. Mr. Cutler is currently undergoing treatment at the Glen Creek Medical Center in Salem. While Mr. Cutler recovers, the court has granted his only son, eighteen-year-old Jace Cutler, power of attorney over the Cutler family’s vast holdings.”

Jace yanked the newspaper clipping from Lia’s grasp, scanned it with his gaze. “That explains why I was never short on cash.” At least he wasn’t a drug dealer. That was some consolation. “If I own all these properties, why was I renting that rat hole in Portland?”

Lia arched two speculative brows. “Maybe you needed distance, a fresh start. I don’t think you stayed in one place for more than a few months. You’d just moved to Portland when you hooked up with Cassie.”

“And the old man? Is he still alive?”

Placing the documents back in the dusty box, she directed a meaningful glance his way. “There’s only one way to find out.”

The Glen Creek Medical Center was sleek and professional, nothing like the cuckoo’s nest Jace had envisioned. Patients weren’t strapped to beds or chairs with electrodes attached to their foreheads. The rooms were clean and well kept, and the patients looked relatively normal. No one screamed or sang out of tune, and there wasn’t a wild stare in sight.

Of course, after a few minutes in his presence, all that could change.

He and Lia had rented a car and driven for over an hour. Now he wondered if they’d made a mistake. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be here,” he whispered, so the nurse who walked a few feet ahead wouldn’t hear. “These people’s psyches are damaged. They’re all vulnerable.” The last thing he wanted was for one of them to go flying out a window.

“We won’t stay long. I—you need to see him.”

The nurse escorted them to the room at the end of the hall. “It’s Mr. Cutler’s lucky day,” she tossed back at them. “He hasn’t had a visitor in years, and now he’s had three in one day.”

“Three?” Jace slanted an assessing glance Lia’s way, noted the same surprise he felt reflected on her face. “Who else was here?”

“Some pretty young thing. She said she knew him from way back, but she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. She couldn’t have been more than eleven when he was brought to us,” the nurse rambled on. “Still, I figured a visitor might brighten his spirits, especially one so lovely.” She placed her hand on the knob and turned it.

He wanted to quiz the woman some more, but when the door to David Cutler’s room swung open, all questions melted away. The stranger glanced up at him with familiar green eyes. The exact same eyes he saw staring back at him from the mirror each morning. There was no question this man was his father, and he didn’t look particularly happy to see him. The frozen sensation in Jace’s chest hardened.

“What are
you
doing here?” A healthy measure of loathing peppered the old man’s voice.

Shock drenched the nurse’s features. “Now, David, that’s no way to talk to your son. He came all this way to see you.” She sounded as if she spoke to a child. Her cheery tone carried an unmistakable reprimand.

She turned to Jace and Lia and flashed a wide smile. Small crinkles formed around warm brown eyes fringed by slightly graying brows. “If only we could give them a lobotomy, like in the old days—” she sighed, “—life would be so much more pleasant.” With a regretful shake of her head, she shuffled out of the room.

Lia’s jaw dropped as the nurse ambled away. Jace leaned over her shoulder, muttered bitterly in her ear, “Told you I shouldn’t be here.”

“Then why’d you come?”

Their attention shifted to David Cutler, who sat in a chair by the window, observing them with barely masked contempt. According to the article they’d read, the guy was sixty-five, but he looked well into his seventies. Unkempt gray hair topped his head, and a generous supply of wrinkles creased his face. His spirit was in no better shape. A weak life-force flickered, struggled to pulse within the shrunken hutch of a man.

“Not sure,” Jace answered honestly. “I don’t know you from Adam, but I hear by some cruel twist of fate you’re my old man.”